Stagnant Water
by slacktension
Summary: He realizes the water is gone from him, and the cruel hands leave to sever the connection like a dagger to the throat. He sputters, mouth dry, before his eyes roll into the back of his head and he collapses against the gritty arena floor.


**Notes:** This was a part of the plans of a longer, speculative fic of Tahno getting over his jerky, asshole ways and moving to Air Temple Island so Korra could help him get his bending back. I still liked these parts so I decided to upload them, because everybody loves Tahno with the burning passion of a thousand suns, right? Right.

* * *

_It feels like being slowly submerged in water, the temperature not soothingly hot or shockingly cold, but stagnant. Stagnant water the same temperature as the air around it, unsafe to drink, pooling with algae and insect larvae. It starts, naturally, at his core and moves slowly outward like it always does, but the temperature-_it's all wrong_._

_But the movement of that tepid water doesn't move out to his limbs the way it should. It's being drawn up, up through his spine, _that's never happened before_, until it crests in murky, dull waves, like the wake after a riverboat, up at the base of his skull and the center of his forehead. He can feel it transfer into the finger pads pressed violently against him, staring up at that lifeless mask, but the world is a jittery mess of dull color. And suddenly, he's unaware of the water in the grates surrounding them, under the arena platform, and he's never not been able to feel the pull of the moon against the tide in the harbor._

_Then he realizes the water is gone from him, and the cruel hands leave to sever the connection like a dagger to the throat. He sputters, mouth dry, before his eyes roll into the back of his head and he collapses against the gritty arena floor._

* * *

His heart beat wildly in his chest, lungs aching with each labored breath, but even an hour after his sprint home he still hadn't calmed himself. _Calm_ chanted over and over in his mind, attempting to push past the swirling complex of-_excitement__? __nerves__?_-emotions running amok in his head. He was always tranquil and capable of reining himself in, at least with his appearance, but laying on the cool silk of his bed and staring up at the dark blue canopy in solitude gave him no reason to settle down. He could feel his hair sticking to the thin sweat layered over his forehead, slippery against his skin from the product he styled it with, so he knew it was a mess. Yet his hand never reached up out of habit to flip it back into place.

His hands were too preoccupied in twitching with memory. With each movement of his wrist, he could feel it, if he shut his eyes and held his breath. It was so faint, sputtering at certain points in his body where the flow struggled to move past the base of his spine, halting completely at the back of his neck. Yet it still reached his fingers, ebbing out to the very tips and pooling there with that same stagnant water feeling. It ached to reach out and grab hold of _real_ water, but it was blocked.

He tried it again and again, different delicate movements all natural to his body until he convinced himself it wasn't a lie. It was real, and he could feel it.

Sucking in a shaky breath, gasping after having held it for so long, he exhaled smoothly and spread his palms flat against the cool silk. He passed his hands over and over the fabric with small, looping circles.

_It__'__s __not __gone_, a small, but confident voice said in the corners of his mind, thick with an accent, _so __what __are __you __going __to __do __about __it__?_

The thought to go back home naturally crossed his mind, but it dissipated like a weak fog just as quickly as it had come. It sounded too much like running away, and even if he had never felt more pathetic, the only thing he still had was his stubborn pride and ego. If bending made him special, his ego was all his, and he had no intention to give it up yet. He had made his choices and never regretted them, so leaving the city for any reason, licking his wounds and tail between his legs, was _not_ an option.

He shut his eyes, feeling a headache start to press against his temples and eek out to his brow. Home was the obvious choice to go, and he tried to think of a place similar, that was easily accessible in the city, but he drew a blank.

Who would help him? His family, of course, but naturally they were off limits. They would never come to the city and he didn't want them there.

He tensed his arms and lifted them at the elbow, tendons popping on the back of his hand with each white knuckled finger splayed, eager to call forth icy daggers to slice through his canopy. This time, full of his rage, he felt no surge from his core and wild panic set it, his breathing heavy once again and drenched in cold sweat.

Sucking in a deep breath and clamping it into his lungs, he lowered his arms and tried the gentle wrist movements again and-_there_. The movement swept up from his core again, stickier than before, but it was still there.

He had to remain calm. It would disappear if he didn't, and the thought that he might not even be able to remember the feeling of how to waterbend crossed his mind, so he bit down on his lip to keep from whimpering. Even if he was alone, he still had some standards as to how he should act. Whimpering in his dark room was not acceptable behavior.

_Think_, he ordered, and he resumed the gently flicks of his wrist, the pulse pressing against the silk and practically calming on contact. _Who __could __help __him__?_

He thought of familiar, cool blue eyes, the same shade of his own but with heavy, thick eyelids and sparse black lashes. Shutting his eyes and sighing, remembering the faces of his family, recalling every familiar waterbender he knew, when those cool eyes morphed into the blazing blue pair plastered all over the newspapers in garish black and white.

His eyes snapped open and he sat up sharply.

_No_. _Not __her_.

He could hardly call himself a fan of the girl, even if after having fought against her for such a short time, he couldn't really _hate_ her. Not with the same passion she seemed to call forth for him. He had seen the photos of himself left over in the gym from the Fire Ferret's morning practice, the sliced edges either damp or singed or marred with dirt. No, he understood toying with his opponent and riling them up, but at the end of the match he always had respect.

Besides, he was confident in the fact that he was naturally a better bender than her. She was far too old fashioned and moved too much like their team captain-even the earthbender moved like him.

_But __she__'__s __the __Avatar_.

_Avatar_. As antiquated as those overzealous beliefs were, Tahno had the penchant to cling to them. He knew a red sky in the morning meant smooth sailing, knew that cattails popping up at the end of spring meant a hard monsoon for winter, and he knew that the Avatar was important. A cocky, brash, idiotic teenaged girl, but she was far more important than her personality masked her up to be. That was just the vessel, ultimately, just a boat to carry the cargo in to shore.

It was her duty to carry on bending throughout the world, which for Tahno, meant the city alone. She had come here to fix the Equalist problem, and he was now a part of that problem. Didn't that mean it was her _duty_, her _calling_ to help him?

_Yes__. __Of __course __it wa__s_.

Tahno continued to recall the more calm, gentle bending movements for the rest of the night, revelling in the weak trickle spreading through his body. Tomorrow he was going to Air Temple Island first thing in the morning, and that trickle would spill back into the violent, raging wave it used to be.


End file.
